Theory & Practice

WINNER OF THE STELLA PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025

‘The most thrilling fiction of the year … an absolute triumph’ Financial Times

‘I loved Theory & Practice … raw, funny, truthful, youthful’ Tessa Hadley

‘One of the finest writers alive…a lightning strike of a book’ Ali Smith

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda, she meets artists, activists, students – and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on ‘the Woolfmother’ into disarray.

Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.

Author Biography

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and emigrated to Australia as a teenager. She was educated in Melbourne and Paris. She is the author of six other novels, most recently Scary Monsters, which won the 2023 Rathbone Folio Prize. She has also won the Miles Franklin Award (twice) and has been longlisted for both the Man Booker and Orange Prize. She lives in Sydney.